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Salad

Compound Vegetable Salad

A salad of cooked peas, string beans, potatoes, white beans, dressed with olive oil, wine vinegar, parsley, burnet, and garnished with lettuce, eggs, anchovies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Compound Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Dress the vegetables

  1. In separate bowls, dress each type of vegetable with salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar.

  2. For the dressing, mix the olive oil, wine vinegar, a little salt, and pepper thoroughly.

Finish and serve

  1. Add finely chopped parsley and burnet to the dressing.

  2. Pour the dressing over the mixed salad vegetables.

  3. Garnish with hearts of lettuce, sliced hard boiled eggs, and fillet of anchovies.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Beans + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Beans + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Peas + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together949 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green peas
Provide the main body and mild sweetness of the salad.
String beans
Add crisp texture and a fresh, green bite.
Potatoes
Add starchy bulk that soaks up dressing and holds its shape.
White beans
Add creamy texture and absorb the oil and vinegar.
Olive oil
Carries flavor and coats the vegetables, adding richness.
Wine vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the vegetables and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Dressing each vegetable separately. Starchy vegetables like potatoes absorb dressing readily, so seasoning each type in its own bowl lets them take up salt and acid evenly. Dressing everything at once can leave some items bland or soggy.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, potato, olive, wine, vinegar, pepper, parsley):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, potato, olive, wine, vinegar, pepper, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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